After
by Junipertree
Summary: An aged Kel looks back on her life as a knight.


This is rather depressing… Kel fans, stay clear

This is rather depressing… Kel fans, stay clear. In fact, I actually do admire Kel, but I'm feeling very morbid. I'm in a dark mood.

Disclaimer: I don't own Tammy's stuff, yada yada yada.

PS: I haven't read Squire. So shoot me.

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After

Kel looked out the window, both elbows on the sill. The soft breezes played with her hair as she looked out over the land, the land which she had worked all her life to defend.

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It's still the same as it was four score years ago, she thought. _Nothing I have done in my life has done anything to change it. Nothing. I might as well have never lived._

She looked at her old, knarled hands, bent and callused with weather an age. Hands that had worked, hands that had endured. No beauty in them now. _Not that anyone would care,_ she thought sardonically._ I'm just another aged knight, who could only fight, and is now useless even in that respect._ Kel could still heft a blade, but would drop it after only a few passes. Her bones ached with the weather, and the only use her muscles went to these days was lifting a fork, knife and spoon. 

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No one remembers me. Everyone was dead, all her friends, all her enemies. She'd outlived them all.

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Not that that_ has done me any good._ She was courting Death, and she knew it. Come to think of it, the Black God was her only companion these days. _He lurks around every corner, he does. Just waiting for me, waiting for me to come. One of these days I'll come, one of these days._

All she did was sit in her rocking chair- back and forth, back and forth- and remember when she was young, idealistic and innocent- the dreams of romance, of excitement and adventure, of fame. Remember her friends, the challenges, the simple joys of living. All that was gone, now.

She was alone.

Some in her place might have suicided. Pah! Suicide was the coward's way out. And when had anyone called Keladry of Mindelan a coward? No, she could just sit here and rock. Rock and remember.

She remembered the Lioness. Meeting her for the first time, and realizing who had given her all those gifts. Alanna had been proud of her- yes, proud that she, of all the girls, had made it through the hardships of becoming a knight. That Kel had proved herself. That Kel could honor her family and home, that she could serve the king with pride.

Bah. Honor, pride. What were those? Just words, unimportant little words. Words that people would die for, to be sure- die for nothing.

Serve the king? Serve the man who had put her on probation just to please his nobles, when it had never been done to any page before? Serve the man who had denied his own daughter pagehood, and married his children off too spouses they didn't even know, much less loved? Why serve the man who held "pride" and "honor" above love?

Her life had not been exciting, or adventurous, not like the life she had painted from the stories about her hero, the Lioness. Keladry's life had been filled with killing, and pain. Seeing her comrades killed one by one on the battlefield, and finally of old age. Being trapped in the gilded cage of knighthood, being fed tales of grandeur when really all she was doing was being a human killing machine. 

She would never achieve the fame she had dreamed of. Alanna, oh, dear Alanna, upon her death had become an instant legend. A marble statue of her wielding a sword was placed in the castle forecourt, and her painting was in the gallery of the renowned. The King's Champion would have been crowned a saint, were it not completely blasphemous. But that was not for Kel- she dwelled in obscurity, among many, many other Lady Knights.

She had been blind, gods, so blind. Never seeing the man who loved her, always going after a prize that wasn't there. Being trapped in a marriage with a man she realized she did not love, while her true partner was slaughtered on the battlefield, right before her very eyes. _Gods, Cleon, it was my fault, it will always be my fault…_

Neal was now dead as well, leaving her a wealthy childless widow. She could not bear a single child, after all those years, nothing but miscarriages. No children to love and support, no children to care for her in her old age.

"Why do you punish me like this?" she yelled up to the ceiling, demanding it of the gods. "Why has everything I have ever struggled for come to nothing?" 

Silence.

She knew the answer, she knew it all too well. Mortals chose their own paths, and only when circumstances became dire indeed did they intervene. Bad things often happened to good people. Wasn't Cleon the prime example of that?

She half-sat, half-stood there as a wash of pain stabbed her in the heart, making her sit down and clutch her chest. Black mists swirled around her eyes, and her vision blurred and faded. _Gods, if this is death, I welcome it with open arms._

~*~

The next morning, the maid found Keladry of Queenscove on the floor, dead. Her arms were wide open, and a faint smile was on her lips.

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Whaddaya think? I do realize that I said 'Keladry of Mindelan' and then 'Keladry of Queenscove'- I just didn't want to give the fishie away too soon. Review!


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